In honor
of Black History Month, we take a moment to reflect back on the life of the
great educator, author, and orator Booker T. Washington and his two visits to
the Prairie Avenue neighborhood in the early 20th century. Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856,
Washington went on to become the acknowledged leader of the African-American
community for a quarter century, until his death in 1915.
In 1881,
the 25-year-old Washington was asked to become principal of the newly formed Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama. Originally called
the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, the school was organized as
part of the movement to expand opportunities for higher education in formerly
Confederate states. Within a year,
Washington purchased a 100-acre former plantation as the site for the school,
and directed the students to construct the first buildings as part of a
work-study program. Washington was a
firm believer in the value of higher education as the best road for
African-Americans to improve their condition, and he remained at the school for
34 years. Among the donors he attracted
to the school were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
Washington
achieved national prominence for a speech he presented at the Cotton States and
International Exposition on September 18, 1895 in Atlanta, Georgia. Known as the Atlanta Address, it laid out the
foundation for what became known as the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement
between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders. In exchange for the rights of a basic education
and due process of law, African-Americans would submit to white political rule.
Second Presbyterian Church
In late
December 1901, just six weeks after dedicating their newly rebuilt sanctuary,
the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church, 1936 S. Michigan Avenue,
invited Booker T. Washington to speak on the importance of education in the African-American
community. The Chicago Tribune gave a detailed account of the speech on December
30, 1901:
Hundreds of people surged around the Second
Presbyterian Church, Michigan avenue and Twentieth street, last night, eager to
hear the address by Booker T. Washington.
For nearly an hour before the doors opened the sidewalks were packed and
when the doors swung open a crush began.
Men and women, white and black, pushed and
pulled in an effort to pass through the broad doors at the same time. Only the diligence of the ushers prevented
serious injury to the struggling ones.
“It’s always so in Chicago,” complained one
gray-haired man. “If there’s any one
worth hearing you can’t get to him.”
By 7 o’clock there was not one of the 1,500
seats in the church unoccupied. Then the
people began to crowd forward into the aisles until they extended half way down
to the pulpit. In the gallery every inch
of available space was filled, while on the stairways leading thereto hundreds
of persons stood for an hour waiting for the lecture to begin and then stood
another hour listening to the address of the colored orator. After the address ushers of the church
estimated the number turned away at 500.
“’It was an immense crowd,” said Mr. Washington,
“and I am sorry there were so many who would not hear me.”
Pleads for Education.
The address of Mr. Washington was a plea for the
education of the negro. He told of the
conditions that prevailed in the South at the conclusion of the war, when the
black man went out to make his way in the world with no other capital but a
pair of strong arms and a brave heart.
Then he related incidents attending the founding
of the educational institution over which he presides in Tuskegee, Ala. The struggles of himself and the first
students who came to his school were recounted.
The school grew, however, and as graduate after graduate went out the
work became easier. The graduates spread
the fame of the school, and soon it became known over the world.
“A few months ago,” said Mr. Washington, “I sent
out 300 letters to prominent men in the South requesting their opinion on the
education of the colored man, whether or not it had proven beneficial to him, and
if his condition had improved. With
three exceptions every man said education was doing more for the colored man
than anything else. One of the
dissenting three said the negro was not so well off as when he was a
slave. The other two were non-committal.
Makes Useful Men.
“We have learned that it is a great thing to
teach a man to do some one thing better than anybody else can do it, and so we
have sought to make our students skillful artisans. Wherever we have sent our graduates we have
received good reports of them. We teach
them to the good citizens and Christian gentlemen. No higher aim can be attained by any
individual than that.”
Mr. Washington spoke with some pride of the
growth of the wealth of his race. In
Virginia he said they own one twenty-sixth of the land and in Georgia,
according to the latest tax returns, they possess $14,000,000 worth of
property.
Union League Club
Washington
returned for a second speaking engagement in Chicago in the spring of
1908. He was entertained at a luncheon
at the Union League Club on April 4, 1908, hosted by Charles L. Hutchinson,
long-time president of the Art Institute of Chicago. The other guests at the luncheon were John J.
Glessner, Franklin MacVeagh (who would be appointed Secretary of the Treasury
the next year), J. B. Forgan, Chauncey Keep, J. C. Grant, Clarence Buckingham,
A. C. Bartlett, Dr. L. D. Case, B. H. Carpenter, and Dr. Park. That evening Washington spoke to a large
audience at the First Congregational Church of Oak Park.
The next day,
Washington spoke in the morning at the Abraham Lincoln Center, a settlement
house at 700 E. Oakwood Boulevard; in the afternoon at the Kenwood Evangelical
Church, and in the evening once again at Second Presbyterian Church.
John J. Glessner
John
Glessner recalled meeting Booker T. Washington in a paper he wrote in 1917 for
presentation to the Chicago Literary Club.
For reasons that remain unclear, the paper was never read, although
Glessner continued reworking it for a decade.
Regarding Washington, Glessner noted:
As for Booker T. Washington, I met him, as many
of us have and as all of us might have.
He was an able man, and a good man, deeply interested about his people,
and devoted to their advancement.
Dr. Washington’s hope for the development of the
race seems ideal to me – to make good, self-respecting laborers first, then
good mechanics, and so up to higher levels.
A good workman, a peaceable, orderly man will be respected everywhere. .
. The self-respecting man, whatever his color, not too aggressive, who does
well and honestly what he does, will deserve and receive respect. The modern man of color, I am convinced, is to
be a great factor in the industrial history of this country.
Glessner
wrote the lengthy paper primarily as a personal reminiscence of the many
African-Americans he had known through the years, beginning with his childhood
in Zanesville, Ohio. The document shows
that he held rather progressive views for his day. In closing his remarks, he sensitively thought
back on the individuals he had known most intimately, whom he recalled
with deep affection:
As for the particular friends of whom I have
made a meager record here, they have descended into the lonesome valley – and I
still hold them in kind remembrance. . . if there wasn’t a high place reserved
for them in Paradise, few of us need cherish great expectations of getting
there.
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